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“Your friend’s over there giving her some tips this morning,” he said.
“Christian?”
Was there another friend? “Yep.” He nodded. “He’s actually really good with this stuff. I may let him take over.”
“If Christian steps on your toes, say something,” Audrie said. “He wouldn’t want to do that. He’s a good guy. You’ll really like him once you get to know him. Wow.”
That word came at the end of her sentence as she took in the cluster of vehicles parked in front of the horse barn. It wasn’t that many, really, but he assumed it was more than she was used to seeing here. The trailer that had brought the horse was still parked out there. The guy who’d driven the horse over was meeting with Rourke about horses for the upcoming movies they’d be shooting.
“They’ve been at it, most of them, since early this morning,” Landon said. “They had to put down a little hay to make it look more like a horse barn.”
“Which is funny because Poppy said she and Christian spent a lot of time cleaning these buildings out. They did all that work specifically to attract the production company.”
“They should have left it like it was,” he said. “We would have chosen this property anyway.”
He caught himself after the words were out.Wewould have chosen this property? That made it sound like he had some say in the choice. He was trying to minimize his role at Sugar Cookie Productions so nobody knew he was a partner. That was the agreement he had with his brother.
“I guess as a consultant, you know a good ranch when you see it,” she said. “Even if it’s a fictional one.”
Right. She saw him as a consultant. It would make perfect sense to her that he’d choose a ranch that actually looked like a ranch when recommending a location.
“I haven’t said thank you,” Audrie said.
Her words stilled his movements. He’d just parked next to one of the equipment trucks and was preparing to put the car in park and cut the engine. When he turned to look at her, the earnest look on her face went straight to his heart.
“For what?” he asked.
“For bringing all this here. You and your brother. This ranch would have closed without you. Everyone in town knew it. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, but you’ll probably find out eventually, anyway. Christian needed this to save the ranch. He was days from foreclosure.”
That was news to Landon. It made him feel good, although he couldn’t take credit for any of that.
“My brother’s not doing this out of the goodness of his heart,” Landon said. “This is a beautiful property, perfect for what we needed. Whatheneeded.”
He corrected himself at the last minute. Maybe he should have left it at “we.” Correcting himself would only call attention to his slip-up.
But she’d acted as though he and his brother had brought the production here together. Maybe she was starting to suspect he was more than just a consultant in all this.
“I know,” she said. “It’s just…it means a lot to Christian, and I know his mother would have been incredibly grateful. This ranch had been in her family for two generations. She’d planned for her three boys to run it together once they got old enough.”
“Well, maybe they’ll still be able to.” He looked at the barn in front of them. “Long after we pack up our equipment and leave town, this ranch will have a marketable gimmick. There are all kinds of ways they can turn it into a tourist destination. Maybe have events on the property.”
“Get married at the ranch where all those Christmas movies were set.” Audrie smiled.
“There’s a wedding scene in one of the scripts they’re filming right there on the bank,” he said.
She shook her head. “I don’t think his brothers will come home, even if this place became the most successful ranch in the country. They’re all citified now.”
Landon laughed. “Citified. I can’t say that’s a word I’ve ever heard before.”
“Well, you’ve heard it now. For some people, small-town life works. But it can be a trap, kind of like living on a ranch is.”
He paused as a crew member exited the barn, walking straight toward them. But his destination was the equipment van parked in front of them. After verifying they were being left alone for now, Landon spoke.
“Growing up, my brother always acted like the goal to success in life was living anywhere but on our property, and we were in a fairly decent sized town in southern California. I think it was his way of rebelling.”
“And you?”
Audrie was looking at him, and he felt it. What she was asking him would require him to open up. It was easy to talk about his brother and how he’d left the ranch. What wasn’t easy was talking about how he always felt slightly inadequate. He was the older brother who couldn’t quite make the ranch work after his dad died and his mom moved to a fifty-five-plus community in Arizona.
